My mother first told me a story in my childhood that she has repeated off and on over the years—probably when she thought I most needed it. This story of hers has the element a great narrative needs: a caring and insightful protagonist, suspense, pathos, and a happy ending. The story is about her favorite high school coach and teacher, who just happened to be my father and the story’s protagonist. Her story, I think, shows why my dad was a great teacher, but even if the protagonist weren’t my dad, it would still be a great story about teaching, coaching, and fairness. Here’s the story.

My mother was a committed member of the girls’ softball team and my dad—her future husband—was the coach. He was also the principal and taught economics and history, along with several other subjects at their very small school (so small, in fact, there was no indoor plumbing). Their small-school team was hot during the early 1950s and, in my mother’s senior year, they had had a particularly stellar season, winning several tournaments. The school and the town knew the team was headed straight for the sectionals. No surprise then that excitement bubbled around their last home game of the season. My mom was the team’s catcher, and one of her closest friends played third base. Everyone was at top performance that game, determined to win, knowing triumph that day meant going forward to the sectionals and team glory! In the last inning, the game was desperately close. The opposing team’s star player jogged up to bat with bases loaded. She swung hard and hit a fly to left field, threw down her bat, and ran like hell toward first base—just as all her teammates took off from their bases and raced around the diamond. At the same time, the left fielder on my mom’s team ran to snatch up the ball and throw it straight to third base where my mom’s best friend waited. She knew the pressure was on. She jumped and stretched her arm as far as it would go. . . and missed the ball. The star player and her teammates finished their mad race around the baseball field and each one slid dramatically home! They’d won. Damn. As everyone left the field that day, many of the girls on my mom’s team made snide and often downright mean remarks about how my mom’s friend had lost the game because she hadn’t caught the ball to tag the runner. They said it was all her fault they weren’t going to sectionals. My mom’s friend was hurt, she was crushed—she was ostracized. Everyone blamed her for the loss. My mom saw tears in her eyes. My dad must have too. He didn’t say anything to the team at the game, but the next day at school, he took time out of their economics class to revisit the game and make sure they understood what it meant to be a team. As he gathered them together, he told them—without raising his voice, “You all played a great game. That doesn’t mean we all didn’t make errors all during the game—you, the players, and me, the coach. Every one of us.” Then he described a few fumbles and missed opportunities, strike outs, and talked about how if any one of those errors hadn’t happened, they would have been ahead and the outcome of the game would have changed. “One person,” he concluded, “did not lose the game. All of those errors, all of us together—as a team—lost the game.”